Mind Games
We begin episode 4 of Breathe: Into The Shadows in Mumbai 12 Months Ago as Kabir and Prakash work together to try and catch their target. Despite being struck in the head and bloodied, Kabir ends up in a stand-off with the killer up on the roof. Unfortunately this ends badly when the kidnapped girl is pushed off by Kabir following the killer firing. Despite saving her life, this is something that haunts him going forward. Abha and Avinash sit together and contemplate the mind games being played with them. As they do, this gives Avinash an idea that it could be one of his old patients that’s trying to get back at him. Kabir visits Meghna again and this time with more context we understand why. She was the girl he pushed off the roof and since then, he’s blamed himself for what happened. Interestingly, she doesn’t blame him and instead asks for his number so they can meet up again in the future. Back at the station, Kabir heads out for lunch with the other officers, including Avtar who was the officer present during the time Avinash was in Pritpal’s house. His memory is hazy though and can’t remember what he looks like. While Zeba speaks to the media about the case at hand, Kabir tries to work out the reasoning behind Pritpal being killed and deduces that it could be a message being sent to police and the first of more to come. Abha returns to her car and finds a dictaphone on the seat. Listening to the message, she hears the killer softly whispering and she runs straight to security in order to play back the CCTV footage and find the killer. Although she does see him enter her car, the cameras obscure his face. When Avinash awakens and hears this news, he looks on the floor and notices a trail of blood leading from the bed to another bloodied package on the table. Realizing the killer has been there, he opens the box and finds a bloodied shoe inside. In order to appease the killer, Abha sets to work trying to win over Natasha and manages to convince her to get a lift home. As they talk, we cut back to Avinash who explains how to gain her trust by using the topic of photography as common ground. With the first step in their plan complete, Abha heads home while Avinash starts to look up old patients who broke their leg as a link to who’s behind what’s going on. With an address in hand, he heads to a fairground but despite the killer not being who he thought, a man giving a speech about lust and anger turns his head as he realizes this mirrors what the killer has been monologuing about all this time. So it appears the killer may be operating around this fairground. Is the killer the same man giving the speech? Or is there something more going on here? There’s a lot of interesting themes being explored this episode and the visuals at the end are great, working well with the sweeping camera work alongside the fireworks to produce a great juxtaposition of co lour. Having said that though, Abha and Avinash really don’t make very competent killers and they’re making a lot of mistakes along the way. Whether this is a trend that continues going forward, remains to be seen.
